Thinker, Briefer, Soldier, Spy

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A maniacal football fan, Hayden sneaked off to see the Super Bowl in February and keeps a Steelers helmet signed by every player on the team as a centerpiece on the conference table in his office. (Owner Dan Rooney happened to be his coach at St. Peter's school on Pittsburgh's north side.) Hayden loves the team, he says, because "it's focused. There is not a lot of glamour. There is not a lot of glitz. There is a reason we don't have cheerleaders: we just go there to watch the football game. It's just focused on the sport itself. It's just going to work." And when he's talking about fixing U.S. intelligence, he is every inch the coach himself. Of his recruits to the new intelligence office, he says all are "if not a first-round draft pick, certainly early draft picks in terms of the quality of the folks." Figuring out how to make U.S. intelligence operatives work--and work together--is like what an NFL coach has to do to get everyone "to emphasize the scoreboard rather than individual performance."

Among the reasons lawmakers may have trouble blocking Hayden is that he had briefed members of the Intelligence Committee on at least some of the NSA's data-mining programs. Asked privately about the extent of those briefings, Hayden told one Senator, "They got the full monty." On the other hand, some of his defenses may come back to haunt him. He repeatedly insisted that "this isn't a drift net over Lackawanna or Fremont or Dearborn," naming three communities with heavily Muslim populations. But last week it became clear that the net was a whole lot bigger and had drifted a lot further than earlier accounts had revealed.